Nicolas Jaar in the Guardian (posted by Harry)

Nicolas Jaar is the renaissance man of electronic music

Nicolas Jaar makes strange, intelligent electronic music. But what is it called, and how do we dance to it, asks Tony Naylor

“Don’t print this,” frets 20-year-old Nicolas Jaar. “It’s the kind of grand statement I make, and regret. But I honestly feel we’re at the beginning of a renaissance in music. It’s an amazing time. Mount Kimbie, James Blake, a lot of underground LA hip-hop – it’s happening. We’re all kids making music without studios, producers or other musicians – without anyone giving us money or telling us what to do – because we want to make really honest work. That’s different. That’s never happened before.”

“The Guide recently saw him play a memorably intense Sunday night set (half-live, half-laptop) at Spektrum in Manchester. Slowing things down to 100bpm, occasionally dropping the beats altogether, Jaar made the packed room his own, splicing together ambient electroacoustic pieces, leftfield electronic pop/dance, world musics, and heavily manipulated edits of everything from contemporary R&B to the jazz standard, Summertime. With its slow, low-slung momentum, his set was deeply sonically strange and unusually emotionally complex.”